Gilded to Death

This adventure module is my submission to the Weird Tales Shadowdark Game Jam, using the displayed Weird Tales magazine covers as inspirational prompts to create something novel. Gilded to Death is a short dungeon-crawl campaign with elements of environmental narrative and emergent storytelling for low levels of play.

DUNGEON LEGENDRY

Off trails unblazed, ruins loom over the sprawling wilderness: remnants of a lost queendom, her majesty’s bathing complex, the Gilding Balnearium, sung in dramatic poetry of long yore.

Obsessed by her wealth and avarice, the Gilding Queen found her doom with the devil worship of Mammon: a suitable patron for a gold-loving ruler, who wanted to bathe all things and beings in the metal’s shine.

In life, the Gilding Queen was also an apt alchemist, having set the means and methods for achieving the Great Work: the Three Masks of Transmutation, hidden somewhere in the ruins. Together, it is said that they turn any metal into gold, and grant flesh true everlastingness! 

THE PRESENT DAYS

The Gilt Gargouille, as locals call a hulking statue possessed by a Mammon-sent sentry, patrols the ruins’ wide courtyard. Inner parts are pervaded by various golden objects, undead thralls, acidic pool-traps of aqua regia, and an enigmatic weretigress.

Even in undeath, the bathhouse staff keep their duties, ever rearranging things therein.

INTERESTED? DOWNLOAD IT NOW!

The module's text may receive a few updates until the end of the jam, so stay tuned!

Gilded to Death is an independent product published under the Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License and is not affiliated with The Arcane Library, LLC. Shadowdark RPG © The Arcane Library, LLC.